Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I know people are going to scuff at the $800 price tag, but frankly it CAN be justified for certain things. For example a lot of studios use a direct feed to a terminal (e.g. WiFi/USB delivery of pictures as they're taken) but they also utilise an SD card as a "backup" in case the photo is somehow lost or the computer was down.

Changing out SD cards on an SLR doesn't really take very long, but it does disrupt the workflow (particularly when you have to take a thousand pictures in an hour or more, that could be a dozen SD card changes) and $800 for a card which might last you the whole day might be worth it.

It definitely won't be useful for your kid's birthday party or even to film your school project. But as an industrial tool there are definitely uses for a card such as this (although external SSDs are starting to become "big," so maybe less so than a year ago).

View on HN

That $800 will be $29.95 before the decade is out. And by then it will be a micro-sd version.

If you don't mind my asking, what application would require a photographer to take 1,000 pictures / hour?

Sport events. Model shoots.

Sports photographers probably take 1000 photos/hour. :)

As for price, i don't think it will even take that long. In 2 years it will cost something like 50 bucks. A USB3.0 128GB flash drive (260MB/s read, 240MB/s write) from SanDisk now costs about $100.

A good indication is that the price of SD cards is largely down to "is this the currently largest card? If so, apply massive premium".

E.g. on Amazon UK right now I see a 256GB Lexar SD card for 300 GBP, or a 128GB SanDisk SD card for 70 GBP, or 64GB SD cards for around 30 GBP...

So expect the prices on the 256GB models to start falling shortly, and once 1TB versions arrive it won't take long until the 512GB versions drop to a quarter or less.

In some event photography situations, where the subject is not deliberately posing but engaged in some action, you can take a huge number of pictures and come up with only a few usable ones.

I've photographed some indoor dog agility events, for example; border collies running at top speed through moderately-lit facilities tends to mean lots of unusable photos.

For me it's perfect when we tether our shoots to an SSD Macbook Pro.

We can 'set and forget' the SD card in the SD slot and have ChronoSync automatically transfer anything in our tether folder to it. It's a great backup/scratch disk. $800 is chump change for a professional photography studio.

edit: I love that I was downvoted for this.

Possibly because there is zero connection between your comment and the parent comment?

Actually, there is and I got the connection perfectly. It's an automatic way to have a separate copy of a high volume shoot where you don't have to interrupt shooting because of the tethering.

Parent comment talks about the price and how in a bit is will be cheaper and smaller. And then asked about when a person would need 1000 pics an hour. You didn't really connect any of that. You talked about tethering.

edit: I'm not saying your comment was lame or stupid or wrong or whatever. It just didn't really fit as a reply to the parent. Perhaps someone else thought so too. I also would not have downvoted you for it. But maybe someone else did.

He replied to me, and I got the reference. I realized that the studio implied the 1000 pics / hour. That thought had not occurred to me but the example made it clear. You don't always need to have everything spelled out. The other example mentioned (sports photography) and fashion used to rely on motor drives, I had completely forgotten about those. And they would go through a roll of film like there was no tomorrow. It's just not something I ever used or did.

Also, I think you are confusing your parties in this thread.

my bad. I did confuse the two of you. never mind.

The article mentions video applications. 50-60 frames per second -> 180,000-216,000 frames per hour (possibly much more if you're shooting at a higher frame rate).

If you're shooting something that's impractical to retake (whether due to expense or it being an inherently one-time event) you want to use minimal compression, if any. Even if you are using compression, HD video eats gigs like popcorn. :-)

Well not just video, but 4K video...

> If you don't mind my asking, what application would require a photographer to take 1,000 pictures / hour?

ID badge "photo days" at large companies, conventions, celebrity-public photos (e.g. Comic Con-esk), etc.

They come in, snap, they leave. Rinse repeat.

A dozen SD card changes? What cards do you use? My camera shoots 20 MB RAW images, so that's 20 GB for a thousand. I have an SDHC 16 GB card that I got for $30-40 or so, and it's going to last me ages.

By the way, I think your post made me realize how professional photographers work: They shoot with burst and pick stuff out later.

I guess it makes sense, you want to maximize the odds of catching a great shot. I'm much more methodical, but maybe I shouldn't be.

Your camera is not the typical kit used by most professional photographers, though. Uncompressed RAW files from a Nikon 810, for instance, are 72MB so your 16G card could hold just over 200 shots a piece.

Of course, whether having an entire photoshoot on a single piece of (relatively fragile) storage is a good idea is another question entirely.

Sure, it's not full-frame, but it's no slouch. It's 20 MPel, whereas the 5D is 23. I doubt the file size is three times higher for three more MPel.

Hands-On Review: Nikon D810

"During these low-light tests I also had the chance to work with both the conventional RAW file size, which yielded approximately 77MB files" http://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/hands-review...

Which seems odd as 36.3MP * 14bits / pixel ~= 63.5 MB though it does say it can save both raw a JPEG at the same time which may make up the difference. That or it's saving 17 bits / pixel.

77MB * 5pictures a second = 23GB / min.

Goddamnit, you're cherry-picking the worst case, and that's still "only" 77 GB. Nowhere near 512.

I suspect battery life will probably be more an issue than filling one of these up.

But, IMO your looking at it the wrong way as your not their target market. This is for HD video not camera's.

Still, the goal is not to fill the tings to capacity it's a cost / benefit trade-off is 500$ (800$ - 300$ for a 256 GB SD card) worth being able to take more than 256GB worth of pictures. And in that case it might be worth it simply to reduce the risk of missing a great shot. Even if they rarely want to go though 3,000 pictures looking for the best ones. There is utility in basically never running out of space. Plus a few applications where you might actually fill a 256GB card.

You seem personally offended that someone said they can see a potential use for a card of this size.

I am personally offended that I express disbelief that 1000 photos are 512 GB and people are arguing that the card is useful.

According to Nikon's user manual for the D810, a 14-bit RAW file from the camera takes approximately 73MB. It's a 36MP sensor. So, it's more than 3x as big a file and would only fit about 14 images per GB of storage...

You're not shooting video... It adds up quickly. My camera (Panasonic GH4) spits out video at 100Mbps which is a gigabyte every 82 seconds. Your 16GB card only fits 21 minutes of video.

512 is still excessive right now (and the price!), but bitrates aren't exactly decreasing.

The GP specifically mentioned 1000 photos, though. I didn't say it's impossible to fill a card, I said that 1000 photos aren't that big.

Would you recommend the GH4 over the Canon 5D Mark III?

It depends on your needs, but the GH4 is quite a bit cheaper and has more advanced video functionality. I already had a nice collection of micro four thirds lenses which made it an easy call.

Somewhat amusingly the Fhantom Flex4k hits ~33 Gbytes per second of RAW 4k footage at 1000FPS. http://www.visionresearch.com/Products/High-Speed-Cameras/Ph...

So, this is still to small to be useful for those videos. However, for more normal 4k videos @ 30-60FPS this is probably a good fit and a much nicer form factor than SSD.

That's retail price.

This time next year it will be 50 cents per GB or $250

Reply on news.ycombinator.com